'Shocking performance'

Karnataka coach J Arun Kumar summed up his bowlers’ performance in one word — shocking.

The coach sat in a morose dressing room and watched his bowlers, especially the frontline spinners KP Appanna and K Gowtham, being put away with utter disregard by Cheteshwar Pujara and the rest of Saurashtra as they chalked up a mammoth 463 for three in 90 overs to dash Karnataka’s hopes.

“I have never seen any team giving away 462 in one day… shocking. In my lifetime I have never seen anything like this,” said the coach. “We have had a long history of producing quality spinners but this is a little shocking. One of the spinners was inexperienced, but there was no reason to not bowl well. We had to bowl in better areas.

“We can’t actually blame the pitch and we bowled in bad areas. The wicket is slow so you have to pitch it up and our bowlers didn’t do that. We just bowled badly and we have to accept that.”

With a long list of established batsman in the team, Karnataka were expected to scale Saurashtra’s first innings total of 469 and take command of the match. Had they done that, things may have shaped up differently.

“We should have out-batted them in the first innings. We wouldn’t have been in this situation at all. Plus, I think we gave away 100-150 runs more in the first innings. We should have restricted them to 320,” said Arun Kumar.

Meanwhile, Cheteshwar Pujara was surprised by Karnataka’s bowling display. “The ball was turning but I think they did not bowl in the right areas. The bowlers were not mature enough. I feel that it is a kind of wicket where you can easily get ten wickets but I don’t think they bowled well. They were not bowling in the right areas.”